, Switzerland German mathematicians
Felix Klein and
Georg Cantor are credited with putting forward the idea of an international congress of mathematicians in the 1890s. The
University of Chicago, which had opened in 1892, organized an International Mathematical Congress at the
Chicago World's Fair in 1893, where Felix Klein participated as the official German representative. The first official International Congress of Mathematicians was held in Zürich in August 1897. The organizers included such prominent mathematicians as
Luigi Cremona,
Felix Klein,
Gösta Mittag-Leffler,
Andrey Markov, and others. The congress was attended by 208 mathematicians from 16 countries, including more than 100 from Switzerland or Germany, around 20 from each of France, Italy, and
Austria-Hungary, 13 from the
Russian Empire and 7 from the US. At the 1904 ICM
Gyula Kőnig delivered a lecture where he claimed that Georg Cantor's famous
continuum hypothesis was false. An error in Kőnig's proof was discovered by
Ernst Zermelo soon thereafter. Kőnig's announcement at the congress caused considerable uproar, and Klein had to personally explain to the
Grand Duke of Baden (who was a financial sponsor of the congress) what could cause such an unrest among mathematicians. For the 1950 ICM in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
Laurent Schwartz, one of the Fields Medalists for that year, and
Jacques Hadamard, both of whom were viewed by the U.S. authorities as communist sympathizers, were only able to obtain U.S. visas after the personal intervention of President
Harry Truman. The first woman to give an ICM plenary lecture, at the 1932 congress in Zürich, was
Emmy Noether. The 1998 congress was attended by 3,346 participants. The
American Mathematical Society reported that more than 4,500 participants attended the 2006 conference in Madrid, Spain. The King of Spain presided over the 2006 conference opening ceremony. The 2010 Congress took place in
Hyderabad, India, on August 19–27, 2010. The ICM 2014 was held in Seoul, South Korea, on August 13–21, 2014. The 2018 Congress took place in
Rio de Janeiro on August 1–9, 2018.
ICMs and the International Mathematical Union The organizing committees of the early ICMs were formed in large part on an
ad hoc basis and there was no single body continuously overseeing the ICMs. Following the end of
World War I, the Allied Powers established in 1919 in Brussels the International Research Council (IRC). At the IRC's instructions, in 1920 the
Union Mathematique Internationale (UMI) was created. No Soviet mathematicians participated in the 1936 ICM, although a number of invitations were extended to them. At the 1950 ICM there were again no participants from the Soviet Union, although quite a few were invited. Similarly, no representatives of other
Eastern Bloc countries, except for Yugoslavia, participated in the 1950 congress.
Andrey Kolmogorov had been appointed to the Fields Medal selection committee for the 1950 congress, but did not participate in the committee's work. However, in a famous episode, a few days before the end of the 1950 ICM, the congress' organizers received a telegram from
Sergei Vavilov, President of the
USSR Academy of Sciences. The telegram thanked the organizers for inviting Soviet mathematicians but said that they are unable to attend "being very much occupied with their regular work", and wished success to the congress's participants. However, the IMU insisted that the decisions regarding invited speakers and Fields medalists be kept under exclusive jurisdiction of the ICM committees appointed for that purpose by the IMU. == List of Congresses ==